Meetings

Today's Modern Network Killing Robot

Viki Navratilova

Abstract

Today's Modern Network Killing Robot will give an overview on the new
generation of DDOS tools. Back in the day, a couple of large pings could
take down lots of machines. When those techniques stopped being effective
means of taking down networks, people started writing DDOS programs. These
programs required a little bit of manual work to install, but were
effective at taking down large networks for a while. This generation of
DDOS tools were made famous in the media by DDOS'ing famous websites for
hours at a time. Soon people learned to control the damage done by these
tools, and so a new generation of DDOS tools were born: Ones that could
infect thousands of machines automatically to create large botnets, and
hide their communications in order to evade detection better than their
predecessors.

These botnets are now the most effective DDOS tools in popular use today.
This talk will go over the more popular botnets, such as gtbot and sdbot,
and talk about how they work and some ways to spot them on your network.

Speaker Bio

Viki Navratilova lost on Hacker Jeopardy when she wouldn't agree that WEP
is secure. After getting her B.S. in C.S., she's bounced around various
corporations in the Chicago area doing computer security, 5ESS, and Unix
admin stuff. She has collected clothing with company logos from all of
them. Her writings on Linux and computer security have been published in
web page, magazine, newspaper, and book form.

In 2001 Viki got the Chicago Tribune to publish a map of all the open
wireless networks in downtown Chicago on the front page of the Business
section to go along with her article on widespread unsecured wireless
networks.